Shadow's End (8 page)

“Can I see the boy?” he asked.

She pointed. The door between the office room and the sleeping room was open. He went through it with her behind him.

Leely was standing naked before the window scene, which was dialed to
forest.
His clothes lay as he'd dropped them in the corner. He had decorated the wall near the window with a feces finger painting, an extraordinary impression of the blown trees in the forest scene. He turned toward them with a lovely smile and a lilting laugh.

“Dananana,” he purred. “Dananana.”

“Excuse me,” she murmured to Trompe. “If you'll give me a moment.”

Trompe nodded expressionlessly.

She was aware of him watching her as she keyed the room-bot, cleaned Leely, and got the clothes back on him. No matter where she put the fasteners, he managed to get his clothes off, little contortionist! And look at the skin of
his chest and shoulders, all blotchy from chill. Well, no harm done. The room-bot had the floor and walls cleaned by the time Leely was dressed again.

“That's my sweet boy,” she murmured, hugging him and putting him down once more, handing him the child-sized paint sticks she'd gone to such trouble to find.

“Dananana,” he said, patting her face with one hand as he threw the sticks across the room with the other. “Dananana.”

“How old is he?” Trompe asked from the doorway. His face showed nothing, but he knew the answer. He was only checking.

She stiffened. “Almost six.” Leely was just past his fifth birthday.

“Big for his age.” Trompe's voice held no emotion, but she could feel something. Disapproval? Or what? “He must weigh what?”

“He's heavy for his age. But, as you know, Leelson is tall and muscular, and my family also runs to size, so Leely will probably be a big man.”

Now she knew what he was thinking.
How will she cope then? When he's a big man, what will she do?
His mouth opened, then closed again, the words unspoken. Well, at least he learned fast. And what right did he have to disapprove?

“What kind of treatments have you tried?” he asked.

She fought down her annoyance. Even though he'd been briefed, he wanted her to talk about it so he could feel what she felt, find his way into her psyche. Damn all Fastigats! Would he be more help if he understood?

She gritted her teeth and said in a patient voice, “I'm sure you were told, but both Leelson and I had a genome check early in my pregnancy. Both of us are within normal limits. Leely's pattern differs from ours only within normal limits. Physically, he's fine.”

“And mentally?”

Had the man no eyes? She kept her voice calm as she answered.

“Well, sometimes he won't leave his clothes on. He won't learn to use the potty, though he does like to eliminate outdoors. He has no speech, obviously. And he doesn't seem to classify. He reacts to each new animal, person, or thing in pretty much the same manner, with curiosity. If one food chip is tasty, he doesn't assume similar-looking ones are. He regards each thing as unique.”

“Really?”

“Give him a red ball, he'll learn that it bounces and squeezes. He may treasure it. If he loses it and I give him another red ball, he has to start from scratch. Though it looks identical to me, somehow he knows it isn't the same thing he had before.”

“Strange.”

She nodded. It was. Strange.

“I understand they've tried splicing him.”

It wasn't a question, but she answered it anyhow. “The geneticists spotted a few rare variations that they thought might be connected to behavior, and they tried substituting some more common alleles. Among Leely's unique attributes, however, is a super-efficient immune system. Each time extraneous genetic material is introduced, his body kills it. It may take him a day, or a week, but he manages it every time. That means that even if we hit upon whatever variant might help, it would take him a very short time to get rid of it. And, of course, it may not be in the chromosomes. It may be elsewhere in the cells.”

The geneticists had suggested a complete cellular inventory, but she had resisted that. Perhaps she didn't really want to know. If they found something …Well, how very final that would be!

Trompe said, “I imagine the doctors are very interested in him! The immune system, I mean.”

“Extremely interested. Particularly inasmuch as he also
heals very quickly. At first thought, these traits would seem to be extremely valuable—”

“But only the healing, the immunity.”

“Right. If they could be separated from the rest of his pattern, but no one knows what particular combination of combinations has resulted in that trait.”

“So, whatever's wrong, it can't be fixed.”

She stiffened. “I object to the word. Leely is all right the way he is! You may as well know that Leelson Famber and I disagreed on that point.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “But…how intelligent is he?”

“I believe he has a different level of intelligence,” she said belligerently. One of her most vehement arguments with Leelson had been on that subject. She tried to be fair. “Though it's hard to be sure because our idea of intelligence is so dependent upon the use of language. He scores quite high on some nonverbal tests, those that don't depend solely on classification.”

“I don't understand.”

“What I said earlier! He doesn't classify things. He can't look at a pile of blocks and pick out all the blue ones. Mere blueness isn't a category for Leely. Nor mere roundness, mere squareness, mere… whatever. Each thing is its own thing.”

“With its own name?”

“Who knows? If he could talk, perhaps that would be true. He's past the age when most children either learn a language or create one.” She heard the pain in her voice, knew Trompe heard it too.

“So?” He was looking at her curiously, figuring her out.

Lutha took firm control of her voice. She had to sound objective and calm. She would not start out on this arduous project with a companion who felt she was irrational.

“Since he's so very healthy, I've considered he might be
a new and fortunate mutation. Perhaps he will learn language later than most children.”

There was no legitimate reason for her to believe that, but she believed it anyhow, passionately, with her whole heart. Leelson had said that for every positive mutation, there were undoubtedly thousands of useless or lethal ones. Intellectually, she accepted that. So far as Leely was concerned, she could not. He couldn't be … useless.

She pulled her mind away from that thought. She didn't want Trompe Paggas to think she was—what? Deluded. A mother who was blind and fond to the point of stupidity? Speak of something else!

Trompe gave her the opening. “He didn't like those colors you gave him. Why was that, do you suppose?”

“A mistake on my part,” she admitted ruefully. “He loves to paint, as you saw, and I thought the colors would be tempting. I was wrong. They don't please him for some reason. They have the wrong texture or smell. He does quite nice renderings in feces, as you've seen. Or in gravy, or mud.”

“Organic media,” mused Trompe. “Probably with organic smells.”

“Perhaps he identifies by smell, categorizes by smell. I don't know. Maybe he has another sense entirely.”

A superhuman sense, she didn't say, though she thought it. A more-than-human sense. She caught herself and flushed. She'd mentioned these thoughts to a few family members, a few friends, all of whom thought she was pushing the limits of reality. And sometimes—yes, sometimes she knew she would trade eventual superhu-manity for a Leely who would learn to use the potty and keep his clothes on!

“No need to get upset, Lutha. I understand.” Trompe was smiling at her, squeezing her shoulder. “Fine. I was briefed. I was just digging for some kind of overall understanding, but we've obviously said enough.” He seated
himself and adopted an expression that said he was getting down to business.

“It's going to be hard for you,” he said.

She nodded, admitting as much.

Trompe tapped his front teeth with a thumbnail. “The Procurator wishes you to know you may have all the help you need, both in preparing to go and to keep your business alive while you're gone. Meantime, I made some inquiries of my own. I thought Leelson might be, you know, simply avoiding the issue, but he's truly gone. No one I spoke to had any idea where he was.”

“Limia could go,” said Lutha, referring to Leelson's mother.

“Easier than you,” he agreed. “I wonder why she won't?”

Both sat silently for a time.

“Let's ask her,” he said. “Let's go ask her!”

“Now?” she cried. “I can't leave—”

He interrupted her with a finger to her lips. “I'll call a crèche team to take care of Leely, and why not now? If Limia won't go, I think we both should know why. We'll run on over to Fastiga and find out.”

S
outh of Alliance Prime the enclave of Fastiga lay beneath its own separate dome, the towers of the men jutting aggressively above the sprawling domiciles of the women. Nothing separated them but multilevel sculpture gardens and fantastically ritualized behaviors, both well observed.

In the domiciles the languorous hours between the evening meal and the erotic observances of deep night were set aside for the reception of visitors. Fires were lit in the halls of lineage, dusty bottles were opened and decanted into elegant crystal, children were sent to their own quarters to bedevil their adolescent minders, womenfolk put on their most seductive draperies, and everyone gossiped about everyone else. Fastiga women were much interested
—some said obsessed—by lineage. All Fastigats claimed common ancestors; they were all one clan; only the precise degree of kinship was subject to analysis, but of such minor quibbles nightlong conversations could be built.

Trompe brought Lutha up from clangorous, crowded traffic levels belowground to the murmuring quiet of a house she had visited once before. And had not intended to visit again, she acknowledged to herself as he fetched her a glass of wine and ushered her to a sheltered corner of the hall of lineage. It was a secluded niche mostly hidden from the other visitors.

“Leelson brought me here once,” she said, aware of a sudden bellicosity, the flaring embers of old anger.

He nodded, as though he already knew. Well, Fastigats did know. They knew entirely too much.

“It may take me a while to get to Limia,” he murmured. “Custom demands I work my way around the room. Don't move. I'll be back.”

He left her. She settled into the chair, which was both comfortable and private. The wings on either side hid her from anyone who was not directly opposite, and there was more uninhabited room around her than in her whole apartment and three or four others like it. Behind her, she could hear two Fastiga women making conversation, unaware they were overheard.

“There's Olloby Pime, with her Old-earth friend,” said one voice. “So hairy, Old-earthers. I had an earther lover once. Did I ever tell you, Britta? So relaxing. Such a treasure. Poor thing had no idea what I was feeling, and I can't tell you how refreshing that was.”

Britta paused before responding. “I perceive your satisfaction, Ostil-ohn, but my own experience would lead me to believe such a liaison would be rather frustrating.”

Britta and Ostil-ohn, said Lutha to herself. Ostil-ohn, who had had a terrestrial but non-Fastigat lover.

Ostil-ohn, who was saying:

“Oh, my dear, no. For example, if I wasn't in the mood
for sex, instead of being coaxed and wooed and pestered for simply hours and having to heat up out of sheer inevitability, I could just pretend I was wild with desire to begin with.”

“He didn't know the difference?”

“Not at all! He hadn't the tiniest flicker of perception, so he got on with it, and I sighed and yelped a bit, and shortly it was over, while meantime I'd gone on thinking what I was thinking about before he started!”

“But, Ostil-ohn, this implies …what if you were in the mood and he wasn't?”

“Ah, well, there are drawbacks to every relationship. It's true one gets in the mood much less often than with Fastigats.”

Britta snorted.

“I wonder where Limia Famber is,” Ostil-ohn murmured next. “I haven't seen her lately.”

Lutha leaned back, listening intently.

“One assumes she has not been taking part in public life since her son disappeared.”

“I shouldn't think she was surprised! What did she expect? Leelson was destined to disappear. Takes after his father in that regard.”

“Ostil-ohn! You're being cruel. Grebor Two didn't disappear purposely. Any more than
his
father did!”

“Listen, when three generations of Fambers stick around only long enough to father one child, then take off and are never seen again, one may be forgiven for assuming a genetic tendency toward vanishment!”

A pause indicating that Britta was considering this. “Three generations?”

“Actually four, if you count uncles. Leelson; his father, Grebor Two; his grandfather, Grebor One; and his great-granduncle.”

“Who was his great-granduncle?”

“Paniwar Famber, son of Bernesohn and Tospia. That's five generations, because Paniwar was an only too.”

“Paniwar was
not
an only. Paniwar had a twin sister, Tospiann. Boy and girl—”

“I meant only
son,”
interrupted Ostil-Ohn.

“—and Bernesohn had flocks of children with other women!”

A moment's silence. “That's right. I'd forgotten.”

“Paniwar had more than one child, too, though it was a scandal! He got some little tourister girl pregnant when he was just a boy. She wanted him to marry her, can you imagine! When he told her Fastigats
don't
, she went to some remote place and had the child secretly, making Paniwar guilty of improper fathering! The talk went on for years!”